Juice, the truly ambrosial other heath food. A nectar that is bottled by God in fruit and decanted by us in glasses. And the squeeze we all succumb to, fresh or in preservative-free cartons. Dabur Foods with their Real Active brands became the first packaged majors to compete with juice stalls, when they launched their fruit-veggie variants like beetroot-carrot in prisma packs for health-seeking adults. Says ceo Amit Burman: "We are reaching corporates through vending machines, call centres through cool closets; soon we'll be in ATM centres and positioned outside jogging parks." For mums and kids, they're rolling out Summer Coolers—jamun, aam panna, watermelon and pomegranate.
Introducing hygiene to the freshly-squeezed market, parlours like Mumbai's Juice Junctions are hauling orchards to the cities. And serving guzzleable glassfuls of Bloody Good (spinach-tomato-honey), Green Gold (amla-green chillies-jeera) and Karela shots.
Mumbai's Fitness Factory has taken liquid delectation to a new high with their chocolate swirl, blueberry and Arctic cappuccinos. Wassat, you ask? These aren't ice-creams. But slurp, whey protein shakes. While soya, the healthy milk, made by Godrej and others is the latest slosh in the white market. India is the world's largest producer of dairy milk. Predictably, soya hasn't caught on in Krishna's proverbial land of cow-milk and honey, says marketing consultant Jagdeep Kapoor. But drink on, it's too early to cry over soya-milk. It could soon capture our parched-for-health throats.
